


Unsettled

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Challenge Response, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:12:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first official date. Will they get away with it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unsettled

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the torchwood_reset challenge on LJ.
> 
> Many thanks to my husband for the beta.

  
  
  
  


 

It had started with the closest possible shave – one during which Jack had cut himself. More than once. Jack never cut himself shaving, not any more. The last time had been in 1918, when his batman, Archie, had bounced in on him to announce the cease-fire. The sex after he'd bled out and revived had been stunning, but Jack had had to concoct an excuse to get Archie out of his quarters and off to spread the news to the rest of his men during the two seconds before the slash in his throat became obvious, and it very nearly hadn't worked. He'd become a lot more careful after that, never spilling a drop until tonight.

As he healed, Jack held up the first pair of trousers – brown – sort of mahoganyish. He loved those trousers, thought they complimented his hair and skin, and they went with his boots. Sort of. In a 'two browns almost always make right' sort of way. Even when the boots – his absolute favourite footwear in his life to date – were the sort of light tan that reminded some of things that babies tended to emit when they weren't entirely well. And the trousers were rubbish with the coat.

He sighed and put them aside with a slight pang. The next pair were a different shade of brown, greyer in tone and – not really any better with the coat, and really kind of worse with the boots. Why did the brown trousers work so well for work? They were absolute crap for this – _for tonight_, he thought. "Must be because of the indoor lighting," he reasoned. "Stay away from brown," he murmured, setting aside the next three pairs ... "Ah!" The next pair were a light grey, almost shimmering, and he felt his cock twitch at the thought of how they would show it off. He sighed again. Wouldn't do to outdo his dinner companion. Not tonight, anyway, no matter how much said companion would love it. He put the trousers in the 'maybe' pile.

Next came darker grey, browner grey, bluer grey, even darker grey, really dark grey, boring grey ... boring grey? Nothing in his wardrobe was boring! _Must be great in bordellos_, he thought, as he hung them back in the wardrobe with firm 'no' and fond memories. "Blue-grey, grey-blue, navy ... hmmm ... makes my eyes look bluer...." he held them up and promptly slumped. "Even I can see two different shades of navy," he muttered. "And I look like I should be collecting the rubbish!" He nearly tossed them in the bin before he remembered how Ianto had stared when he'd worn them with ... what colour shirt had that been? He hung them back up, wincing that it was most likely in the wrong place. "He'll probably kill me," he said under his breath. "I'm not ready for that, just yet."

Finally, he came to a pair of black, flat-front trousers and his mind lit up. They were at once unassuming and perfectly made. They fit him so well that jaws would drop (and always had) when people noticed him. They made his legs look a mile long, and his arse irresistible. Unlike many of the others (all pleated and sexy as hell), they had no excess fabric and thus showed off his flat stomach. (Well, mostly flat.) And he knew just where to find the perfect black waistcoat to go with it, which would go perfectly with his current dark navy shirt and baby-sick tan boots.

"Okay, I look like one of Ed Gorey's models, and the boots kinda – draw the eye," he said, smiling at the Iantoism. "And really not in a good way," he added, as his heart sank further at the thought of having to break in the pair of black dress shoes he'd bought a few decades back and never worn.

So. Shirts ... Blue, blue, blue, blue, light blue, blue, light stripes, dark stripes, orange – _orange?!_ "Owen!" – white, white, white (-ish), black – "Ooh ... no, too Ninja" – tan, brown, cream, super-electric blue, red, candy cane, blue stripes, blue ... he began to think that he should sort through the blues, because as the pile started to spill off the camp bed, he noticed that they actually looked different from one another. Maybe he should ask ... no. Not Gwen. He couldn't go to her for advice on a date with someone else. Yes, she was taken. Yes, he knew he couldn't have her in this time period, or rather, because she'd made it clear that this Rhys entity wouldn't stand for it, and he really wanted her to have a life. But she wasn't fully labelled (married) yet, and it still hurt too much. Tosh, perhaps? Except she'd gone home. And he wasn't sure that Ianto would want anyone else to know about their date. Owen – had slipped an orange shirt into his bunker. Fab leather jacket or no, Owen was a prat who'd tell him to wear puce. Whatever puce was....

Back to shirts ... pink, rose – which reminded him of Estelle, so he put it very carefully away, as he always did when he pulled it out of its resting place – light green, dark green, navy, grey, blue, turquoise, lapis, royal, blue, light blue, dark blue.... "Right!" He bundled up all the shirts that weren't blue and stuffed them into the drawer, wondering just why they didn't fit as well as they had. "He's going to kill me," he said, shaking his head.

After sorting through sixteen blue shirts, not counting the striped one, Jack chose one that he would describe as blue with a sort of smoky, sultry touch.

Which really showed off the boots.

He pulled his black leather belt from its hanger and sighed, stooping to pull the dreaded black dress shoes from their box at the back of the wardrobe. They were beautiful, he had to admit. "Algie would've loved 'em," he said, a bit wistfully. Vintage World War II. Perfect with the coat and the other clothes.

Also perfect with the 51st century aftershave he'd never dared wear. If his own pheromones and natural scent set Ianto off as much as they did ... he smiled slightly and reached into the very back of the spatiotemporally compressed wardrobe and pulled out the vial, extracting exactly one pinhead drop from it that he daubed onto the backs of his knees. Too dangerous on the throat, he thought. The waiters would be all over him like rice on white people. Or was that 'white on rice people'? He shook his head. The syllable count wasn't right, so he wouldn't be attempting that bit of pop slang tonight. It was probably out of date, anyway. "Sort of like me." He eyed the shoes.

*****

Jack set forth gingerly from the tourist office door, testing the boardwalk for slickness with the pristine soles of his brand new, sixty-two-year-old dress shoes. It wouldn't do to slip and fall when he needed to make an impression, especially when he was meeting his date at the tallest, sleekest symbol of pure, phallic pride – periodic fluid emissions, and all – in early twenty-first century Cardiff. He nearly came a cropper as he began to change direction, regretting his decision not to use the invisible lift as his right foot slipped out from under him and he skidded, fighting for his feet until he fetched up against the Celtic Ring. He was grateful to the coat, this time for muffling the boom his hipbone would have made against the bronze.

But then, as he regained his footing and assumed an air of casual (very fake) nonchalance walking through the passageway leading to the Plas, he caught sight of Ianto standing on a certain kerbstone and thought that some slipping and sliding was preferable to losing Ianto down an exotic lift shaft. Especially when the man in question looked so edible.

Something came over him, then. A decades-old memory of brand new shoes and spats – silly things, spats, unless you were working in a foundry – and a first date that made him tug repeatedly at his collar as he made his way toward the most fascinating woman he'd yet met on earth. He retreated before Ianto could turn and see him, and flushed a bit at the memory, or perhaps at having forgotten the trick of scuffing up his soles on rough paving so that he could walk less like an ice skater. Flustered, he pawed at the ground and tugged at his collar, twisting his feet into the pavement impatiently as he muttered under his breath about never having to worry about such things in the Boeshane. A passing pair of girls (a couple, perhaps, on their way to – wherever it was they were doing that was probably fun and that tragically didn't include Jack) gave him a wary look and a wide berth that made him realise that he wasn't speaking English. At least, not of the twenty-first century variety. He shook his head, pulled himself together and strode back up the ramp and onto the Plas.

He could have sworn that Ianto caught sight of him out of the corner of an eye before turning to look at East Bute Street as though a Weevil might be lurking there, or the Prime Minister were making a surprise visit. For just a moment, Jack missed the comfort of his Webley on his hip. Then he smirked. And then he enjoyed (and emphasised) the click of his crisp, leather heels reverberating through the Plas.

When Ianto turned to stare up Lloyd George Avenue, Jack got a bit annoyed. Here he was, making his grand entrance up the most theatrical runway he could imagine, impressing the hell out of all the passers-by (all two of them), flanked by more minor but still respectable, red-illuminated columns (and if that wasn't a paean to male prowess, he didn't know what was), and the object of his frustrated desire wasn't even looking at him! It was enough to drive a man to –

Ianto had turned around and caught him. And the light of earth's pale, dormant moon had caught Ianto.

Jack was smitten. Jack didn't _do_ smitten. Well, not anymore, at least. Not since Estelle. Or possibly Lucia, but that had been more like a sort of ... no, he'd been smitten by her, just not quite the same way. Or maybe it was exactly the same way. Gorgeous co-worker, sarcastic wit, completely willing and able to knock his lights out whenever the need arose. Just as willing to kick him to the kerb when things got too hot and heavy – like when Melissa had seen him die for the second time. He wouldn't have a child with Ianto, at least, but it might be harder to persuade the man to let him go when the time came. If it came. When it came. It had to be _when_. But why did it, when Ianto was looking at him like that? Was looking like that, rather. Because nobody had looked at him like that for a very, very long time, and it was so—

"Jack?"

Jack blinked. "You look—" He swallowed at the croak. "You look incredible."

"So do you," said Ianto, and he sounded as nervous as he had when he'd sneaked back into the Hub just a day before his suspension was to end.

Swamped by relief and affection, Jack moved to take Ianto in his arms, but stopped as Ianto flinched. "Something wrong? Have I got something on my face?"

Ianto glanced around as though he were expecting Weevils or hunters to spring out of the pavement.

Jack followed his eyes and saw a twenty-something man with his arm around a slightly younger woman, a pair of thirty-something men walking side by side in silence, looking as though they were trying to figure out what to talk about as they headed for the nearest pub, five young women stumbling against one another and laughing about something that sounded like a television series, and two forty-something men strolling hand-in-hand. For a long moment, he watched them with Ianto, whose gaze had glued itself to the pair. For almost as long a moment, he tried not to think about the memories and lost hopes their long union brought to the surface, or the sharp tang of loss whenever he thought of the time lost with Lucia. This was why he didn't do dates. This was why he didn't do couples. This was why—

"Are you all right?"

Jack realised that Ianto's arm was around his back. "Yeah." He wished he didn't sound so needy.

"Where are we going, Jack?"

Jack looked at Ianto through a haze of 'not yet'.

"For dinner," supplied Ianto.

"Oh. Um, that way," said Jack, gesturing towards Lloyd George Avenue.

"Ah. That narrows it down, then."

"La Plage," said Jack.

"Oh," said Ianto.

"The food's supposed to be great there," said Jack.

"It isn't that," said Ianto, quickly. "It's just ... I feel a bit underdressed."

Jack shook his head. "Never happen."

Even in the moonlight, Ianto's flush was obvious. "Erm, perhaps not suitably attired, then."

Jack squeezed Ianto's shoulder. "You're gorgeous, and you'll put everyone there to shame. But if you'd rather go to Bosphorous, we could—what? Have I grown an extra head?"

"You've never been there, have you?"

"Well, no, but it's supposed to be romantic. Isn't it? I mean it's got great views...."

Ianto shook his head and linked his arm firmly through Jack's. "La Plage will be fine," he said, with a smile whose professionalism was utterly betrayed by the light in his eyes. "Assuming we get there in one piece."

"Why wouldn't we? Know something I don't?"

Ianto seemed to be fighting the most obvious retort. "You're driving."

*****

Ianto had been right, in a sense, about the dress code at La Plage. Neither of them quite fit in, although Jack had something of the advantage there. He hadn't been expecting that when he'd caught sight of Ianto at the water tower, but it seemed that retro was every bit as popular there as whatever version of casual chic it was that he watched walking by. On the other hand, Jack had been right about Ianto putting everyone else there to shame. They'd have to come back here after he persuaded Ianto to part with the suits and go for the eclectic elegance of the place. Nonetheless, they both seemed to command more than their fair share of attention from the staff there.

As for the food, well.... Jack had always found Dover sole quietly orgasmic, but never more so than when he'd had the chance to select his very own from the fish bar, or to watch Ianto getting lost in the meal, the chrome, the experience of the place. ("Atmospheric", he'd commented as they'd passed the dry ice well on the way to the fish bar.) And Ianto's gradual relaxation as the place filled with atypical couples and groups was a sight to behold. Looking at some of the punters there and the way Ianto reacted to them, Jack wondered for a fleeting moment how Ianto would take to space-time travel. The moment was fleeting because the answer was both too obvious and too painful. He pulled himself back from the brink before Ianto's smile became a question.

The Weevil in the parking garage after the ultra-dark chocolate mousse and twenty-five year old single malt was a bit of a surprise.

So was its partner, who caught Jack across the throat from behind as he'd been rushing to help Ianto subdue the first one. Jack laughed as he sprayed his assailant and slid down the wall, vision blurring as Ianto ran for him.

"Jack!"

"Just a flesh wound." And then he was in the dark place.

He returned from it fighting, reaching out for air, for life, for sanity – for a hand or an arm or a wall. Something to ground him and tell him that he was normal, mortal, connected. And where was that wall he'd slid down, anyway? Somebody must have laid him down and put a pillow under his head – a pillow that moved and was covered in fine wool and smelt of Ianto. He grasped for any and every bit of the man he hoped was there as memory jolted back in disarrayed gobs. "Where are the Weevils?" His voice sounded harsh and alien.

"Tied up in the SUV," said Ianto, his own voice shaky, as though he were trying to control something he couldn't.

Jack recognised an arm and clutched at it. "You all right?" he asked, bleary and not quite himself, but tensing to leap into action.

"I'm fine," said Ianto, his voice coming into focus and all business.

"Sorry," said Jack, trying to push himself up and finding something heavy in the way.

"It's alright," said Ianto, gently. "Take your time."

"Public," said Jack. He still felt slurred and shaky, but something of the previous urgency had dissipated.

"I put up caution tape," said Ianto. "Wouldn't want anyone getting eaten by our passengers."

"Good plan," said Jack, his mind slotting back into place a bit more as he patted Ianto's arm. Arms. Arms that he hadn't originally felt around him, as he did now. This, he hadn't experienced before. Not even in the year he'd just endured that never really was, when Tish had been there a couple of times to help ease his way back before feeding him rancid, boiled swede. He chanced a look upwards as the phantom pain in his throat faded. "How long?"

Ianto blinked. "Ten minutes."

"You must've been quick," said Jack, trying to raise an eyebrow.

"Didn't really keep track," Ianto admitted. "How's your neck?"

It wasn't until that moment that Jack realised that Ianto's hand had strayed up to rest on his throat, and that he didn't mind it. "It's fine."

For a brief moment, Ianto stroked Jack's cheek. "I missed you."

Jack gazed up for his own moment into Ianto's eyes and ran a hand up Ianto's arm to squeeze it. "We should get back before they wake up," he said, quietly.

"Oh," said Ianto, removing his hand from Jack's throat quick as lightning. "Yes, of course. Want a hand—"

Jack was up and offering his hand before the question could be finished.

"Thanks," said Ianto, taking the hand and pulling himself up a bit more unsteadily than Jack had expected.

"Pins and needles?"

"Hazards of a concrete floor," said Ianto, ruefully.

Jack smiled, inserting himself into Ianto's space, grasping his shoulders fondly, and then frowned in mid-breath and pulled back, still holding Ianto by the shoulders. "How come you're not dead?" he demanded, looking Ianto over from head to toe.

Ianto's eyes slowly widened as he looked at Jack and then at himself as though he were afraid to. "Have I got an alien on me? Poison? Something sticking out of me?"

"Blood. You're soaked in it. And you didn't keep track of time. You got hurt!" Jack unbuttoned Ianto's jacket and started to probe carefully, looking for the source. "Where did it get you? Not the throat ... chest? Wrist, maybe?" He pushed a bloody cuff up to check and felt Ianto shaking. "It's okay, we'll get you to A&amp;E and ... you're laughing. You're losing oxygen! C'mon, we've gotta hurry!"

"Jack! I'm not hurt. Well, bruise here and there, but—"

"Then where the hell is all this blood coming—" Jack looked up with wide eyes of his own. "What did you do to them? You know I don't want them hurt!"

Ianto rolled his eyes. "Hello, throat wound? Every major blood vessel on the right side of your neck severed?"

"That's.... Oh. Mine? All of it?"

"Never knew anyone could hold that much of it," muttered Ianto.

Jack swallowed and raised a hand to Ianto's face, stopping at the sight of his own bloody fingers.

"Bit late for that," said Ianto, with a smirk that carried an affection that Jack hadn't realised he'd missed so sorely, or had wanted so badly to see in those particular eyes.

Jack gave a sort of moist, half-laugh and cupped Ianto's face. "I'm sorry I bled all over your suit."

Ianto shook his head. "I'll take it to the special ops cleaner. Your coat, too. It's been a few months since he's seen it, and he's been asking where you've been."

"You've told him about me?"

"Only that my boss likes a retro style and has a particularly nasty job in special ops," said Ianto, squeezing Jack's shoulder. "Don't have to retcon him, that way."

Jack smiled for real, then. "Good thinking." He stepped closer. "I missed you, too."

Ianto closed his eyes for a second. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

Jack heard 'Can you tell me that, at least?' as though it had been broadcast over every PA system in Cardiff. It hit him almost as hard as though it had been. "I suppose," he said at last, his voice much steadier than it wanted to be.

Ianto nodded. "I'd hoped.... Erm ... I ... we should be getting back."

Jack breathed in to hide the sharpness of his feelings. "Want me to drop you off at yours on the way?"

Ianto shifted, nervously. "Erm ... about that...."

Jack felt a smile and a beam of hope claiming his brain. He drew closer and ran his hands down Ianto's arms, drawing him in a little. "Yes?"

Ianto held himself back. More uncertain than resisting, it seemed to Jack. "I ... don't really have a place, anymore."

"You what?" Jack probed Ianto's eyes with his own. "What happened to you while I was gone?"

"Nothing! Well, not like that." Ianto swallowed and held Jack's gaze, a certain pleading in his eyes. "I haven't had a flat of my own since just after Suzie died. Again."

"But where... how... what do you do when we don't, uh—"

"Sleep together?" Ianto shrugged. "I find my corners here and there. Sometimes I treat myself to a hotel. There's a nice B&amp;B down the road gives me a good discount. I thought I might go there tonight."

"Oh. I thought we might, you know ... um—"

"I don't know if I'd be any good tonight, Jack," said Ianto, very quietly.

"Why? I thought you were having fun."

"I had a wonderful time."

"Until the Weevils attacked us," said Jack. "Remind you too much of the night we met?"

"That part was uncomfortably cool, actually," said Ianto around a smile.

"Then...?"

"I hadn't been expecting you to die tonight. I'm not exactly used to that, yet."

Jack's heart fell right through the floor. "Oh," he heard himself say.

"It's ... it's not that I don't want to be with you," said Ianto, sounding more like Jack felt than Jack had been prepared to hear.

"Oh?"

"It's that ... I ... can't get it up," muttered Ianto, very fast and softly enough that only dogs and Jack could hear him.

"You ... um ... never had a problem before," said Jack.

"Because I never had a date that couldn't die, before," quipped Ianto.

"I can't help it," said Jack, far more miserably than he'd ever intended.

"I know," said Ianto, reaching unconsciously toward Jack's neck.

Jack's sigh came out as part sob as he put his hand over Ianto's, drawing it in to rest once again on his throat, where the Weevil had wounded him. "How about just sleeping? I mean, I want to be with you, and you've said you want to be with me. Not everything has to be about sex...."

Ianto stared at him. "What happened to you when you were gone?" he demanded.

Jack sighed. "I didn't do this to get you into bed with me. I ... like you, Ianto. And I could really use your company tonight. I've missed you."

Ianto stroked Jack's throat, lingering on the pulse point for a moment before moving upward to thumb away a tear that Jack hadn't known had fallen. Very slowly, he leaned forward and kissed Jack's cheek.

Jack gave a silent sob.

"All right, Jack."

**Current mood:** |   
anxious  
---|---


End file.
